thrashingcows

Thought I'd share some pics and info on how things went....

Well I left Saturday morning at 9am to go get my 48 Desoto from Tigard OR. Went down bare, no trailer, took me about 6 hours to get there. Was cruising at approx 65 mph, in 5th gear, 1750-1800 rpm and about 2lbs boost. Went 400 miles on 15 gallons...that's 26.6 mpg.

Picked up the U-Haul trailer Sunday morning and loaded up my old 48 Desoto.

Hear I am ready to roll out of OR,



Truck hauled well. I used 4th gear, for any grades, 2000rpm at 55 mph. Mostly pulled at 7.5 lbs boost and about 850-900 on the pyro. When things leveled off I popped it into 5th.

Here's the truck at the first rest area I stopped at.



Took me a little over 8 hours to get to Belingham WA, with a couple major highway slow downs due to accidents...WA state and rain....who knew they couldn't drive in that weather...

Here's where I slept last night....Not the most comfortable sleep for a guy my size, but good enough to save me another $75 for a hotel room.



I arrived at the Canada/USA border at 8 am, got the US paper work taken care of in a matter of minutes...the Canadians Customs...well I was there for over 90 minutes and got the royal run around...

Here's one at the Canadian customs...



And finally the Desoto is at it's new home.



I was impressed at how well the truck did, the only thing that went wrong was the clutch fan seized solid, so it's pulling a begeezes amount of air and making a heck of a noise at RPM's over 1500. I have a new clutch on the way. So all in all a good trip and I'm very happy with the way old RAE performed.

I haven't fuel up, but think I used about the same amount of fuel, 15 gallons, and went 350 miles...so pulling it got 23 mpg!!

Twitchy

That's amazing mileage!

Bencie

Nice Trashingcows, good job Rae! Whats your plans for the Desoto? Brings back some memorys for me, I used to have a 46 Dodge 2dr sedan. I did a mild streetrod treatment to it, 350 chev and auto trans. The kids were small then and we took lots of camping trips in that car, you sure can pack alot of stuff in those back seats and trunk. The kids always said the back seat was like a couch.

thrashingcows

Plans for the Desoto...well going to keep it the original 251 flathead six, with some period correct upgrades. Run a split factory exhaust manifold, with a vintage aluminum intake dual carb set-up. Eventually a 833OD 4speed tranny, in place of the original 3 speed. Then lower a few inches and some wide whites. Should be a hoot.

The_Head

Let's see. Going slow, 2wd, manual transmission, near stock.. You better get good mileage. That's a sweet truck though.

KD93

Very nice Thrashingcows! Great mileage, and a clean truck to do it in. It's guys like you that show Dodge how wrong they were to not build a crewcab with a Cummins.

thrashingcows

Thanks for the kind words. I'm pretty happy with things as well. And that 2nd Gen seat I installed was a little bit of heaven. I wasn't hurting at all after several hours behind the wheel.

And I'm sure glad my clutch fan decided to seize solid, instead of going the other way...spinning with no cooling, or bearing coming apart and then sending the fan into the shroud and rad.

thrashingcows

Another walk down memory lane....I'm actually really enjoying going through my old threads.

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